Here’s what everyone can agree on: Ted Turner was interviewed by Piers Morgan last night, and said a variety of things, and blamed the low ratings of the network on CNN’s commitment to being the “unbiased NYTimes of TV news.”

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“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.” Ted Turner’s life masterclass – CNN right now.

As to the real reason behind the downturn, no one seems to agree. The “riff-raff” on social media (as well as well known radio pundit Rush Limbaugh) seem to think it’s because they do in fact have bias, and are simply not honest about it.

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Ted Turner: “I wanted #CNN to be NYTimes, even if it cost ratings”. Mission Accomplished!

What is clear is that CNN has had a ratings problem since the inception of the network, and all the reconfigurations of the network haven’t served to increase the audience in a meaningful, non-spikey way.

Rush:The era of the old media is over. CNN had it’s lowest rated month in 11 years in April. The last time CNN had ratings this bad, the date was August of 2001. CNN had a grand total of 357,000 viewers in an average sweep period, and just 108,000 of them in the 25-54 demo. That puts them off 21% in total viewership, 29% in the 25-54 demo for the year. Fox News was up 2% to 1.1 million viewers overall. This is not from 6am to 6pm. This is within like a 15-minute sweep or maybe in an hour, I think with TV it’s probably an hour. The shining star in the CNN lineup was Piers Morgan, who was down only 14% at 9pm. In primetime, CNN was down to a two-year low. And that’s with the silver fox, Anderson Cooper is his name. Silver fox……lol

Where is CNN going wrong? Is it the medium? Is it the format? Is it the bias?

I’m inclined to believe it’s the business model and the medium more than anything. CNN treats a niche interest (politics, world and national news, and large scale trends) as a mainstream endeavor, when in fact it’s niche need. Only slightly larger numbers of people are interested in watching CNN’s raw news feeds than are interested in reading straight news off the AP or Reuters websites – that is to say, about 300k.

That’s a niche network. The sooner CNN realizes that, the sooner they can adjust their business model accordingly.